The Halloween Adventure
by Animegirl1129
Summary: Yet another not boring case, on yet another holiday for Harry and Perry. Subtexty. Halloween ficcage for LJ Comm KKissBBang. first chapter edited a bit .
1. Chapter 1

The Halloween Adventure: (Why does all of this shit happen on holidays?)

**_I'm not 100% happy with this. Mostly cause it was 5 am and I was writing it between doing speech work, reading Matchstick Men and being dstracted by 10000 other things. And I was hoping to finsih the damn thing. SO, boys arent mine. Enjoy!_**

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PART I:

"'Harry, get the door.' 'Harry deal with the annoying trick-or-treaters.' 'Harry, hurry up.'… God, is there anything you _don't_ want me to do?" I, one less than amused Harry Lockhart, asked, as I returned from what had to be my seventy-second trip to deal with the above-mentioned trick-or-treaters.

Perry glared at me from the bathroom doorway. "Yes. Complain. I don't recall asking you to do that."

I groaned, rolling my eyes, I really should have seen that coming. "Aren't you ready yet? It's a Halloween party, not Miss America 2008."

"You're costume took, what? Five minutes and walking into a door to adjust to the mask? Actual effort is involved in perfectly applying vampire make-up."

"Remember that time I said this," I gestured appropriately. One index finger on my nose, and the other pointing at Perry's reflection in the mirror. "Was the gayest thing you'd ever done? Yeah, I take that back."

"Fuck off, moron."

Yet another knock at the front door pulled me away from responding to that terribly original retort. I dealt with the gaggle of trick-or-treaters (a princess, Spiderman, a pirate, and a lazy teenager who'd chosen to forego a costume) quickly, returning to find Perry stepping out of the bathroom. Fucking, finally.

"You're not going to make any 'sucking' comments, are you, Dracula?" I teased, as he checked his vampire teeth in the hall mirror one last time.

Perry glowered. "That depends. Are you going to be this annoying all night, Bats?"

I promptly flipped him off as we stepped out the door. I had the sense of mind to leave a large bucket of candy on the steps as we went to appease any trick-or-treaters who tended to favor the tricking aspect when the treat part was not met. Perry didn't quite understand that, but, hey, it's what saves your house from getting egged in New York.

"Why are we doing this, again? I thought you said you hated Halloween?"

The vampire sighed at me as we got in the car. I knew that one. That one meant that he'd gone over this before with me and could not believe me, idiot that I apparently am, was asking again. "I told you. Twice. The couple throwing this huge shin-dig looks pretty good for a cover-up on that missing teenager case we took last week."

I nodded. "Oh, yeah. Right. That."

The case that we're referring to was that of twenty year old, Sara Matthews. She'd gone to a party at her boyfriend, Eric Berry's house. His parents – Stephen and Kate Berry were the ones hosting the party we were going to. It was the last place the girl had been seen and we hadn't been able to find a sneaky way to get in to look for evidence. I thought we'd just dropped the case, but evidently, we were biding our time.

"You think the kid'll be around? It is his parent's party." I asked. I mean, what teenager wants to hang out with a bunch of people his parents invite? Especially on Halloween.

Perry shrugged. "I don't care about what the kid is doing, so long as it's not getting in our way. We're going to look for evidence, maybe interrogate the parents. And when I saw 'we', I, of course, mean 'me'. Your job is to make sure no one gets too interested in what I'm doing." Wow, what a surprise. Me, a lookout? That never happens. Please, tell me you know the walls are bleeding more sarcasm than the blood capsules Perry popped before we left.

I shrugged, glad we were almost there. "Why don't I ever get to be the one doing detective stuff?"

"Hmm. Why? Let's see… You've been shot at, held hostage, beaten up countless times, nearly arrested twice, illegally parked, gotten a ticket, blown cover, stop me any time. You've taken cases for people who have tried to kill me because you don't think to check my well organized 'WARNING: DO NOT TOUCH WITH A TEN FOOT POLE' files…"

"Okay! I get it!" Yeesh, you'd think he'd had the list memorized or something. He pulled the car over – which thoroughly confused me. "Ugh, why are we stopping?"

"Don't want to be seen together." He growled, leaning over me to open my door. "Get out. You know what to do."

For once, I am not the one with an idiotic plan. "No. Everyone knows who you are, and they all know that I'm always around you. It'd be easier if we tried to pass ourselves off together. Pretending to not know each other would just make us look suspicious. Half of L.A. probably thinks we're fucking anyway." We always do these stupid jobs apart. But, two hours later, Perry will head out to some swanky party with me in tow. It's ridiculous.

But, Perry looks completely clueless. And when the fuck did this turn into the fucking twilight zone? "No, they don't. Get out of the car."

"Fine," I huff, climbing out. I wait for ten minutes or so before I walk the last half a block to the party.

Perry's already working the hosts of the party (dressed as Neo and Trinity) when I slip into the crowd. I'm good at that; no one pays much attention to me. Probably because they've all realized that I'm not an actor or an agent or someone who can make them rich, just Gay Perry's shadow. Which, don't get me wrong, is not a bad thing. You wanna know what happened to the last guy who tried to beat me up? Yeah? So would I. Haven't seen him since.

"Aren't you Van Shrike's friend?" Someone I don't recognize asks me, appearing out of nowhere, blocking my view of Perry who has evidently disappeared anyway. "Well?"

"Uh, yeah." No point in lying. He could ask half the people here.

"Come with me. He asked me to come fetch you." At the time, I had no reason to doubt such a thing.

I nod, following along after the man. At least until I realize we're walking in a direction I know Perry hadn't gone in the half a second my eyes weren't on him. "Where are we ---"

A fist connected with my face, sending me backwards with the force. Oh-kay. Time to implement those fighting skills Harmony's been teaching me, I think. He got a blow in to my chest before I could get my shot in, and I pathetically fell to the ground with the wind knocked out of me. Perry's going to kill me for losing another fight. Which reminds me—

"Fucking fuck! What the fuck… is wrong with you?" I gasp out, still trying to suck air back into my lungs.

"Stop digging in this missing girl nonsense." The man says, and then walks away, after adding one more good punch for good measure.

The next thing I know, I'm sitting beside Perry in a room I don't recognize. We're still at the party, I figure. Inside somewhere. He's got me holding an icepack to my eye and he's bandaging a cut on my jaw. Which fucking hurts.

"Ouch."

"Shut up. Never hear Batman complaining in the movies, do you?" He snarks, clearly not in a good mood.

Perry's moods never affect my biting wit, though, so I add, "He didn't have Count Dracula around griping at him, did he?"

"Who'd you manage to piss of this time?" He ignores my comment, instead surveying the variety of costumes we can see through the sliding glass doors of the room. "Jack Sparrow? Or the Tin Man?"

"Neither. He was dressed as Zorro." I swatted his hand away. "He told me you asked him to come get me."

Perry snorted. "I don't tell people to go get you. I whistle and expect you to come."

Amused, though still in considerable pain (I might have been walking around with a bruised rib… or 3), I grinned. "I thought you said there wouldn't be any 'sucking' jokes."

"Fuck off. The parents don't know anything. The son and his friends might, though. We're off to another party."

"Fantastic."

Okay, so, to recap. Missing girl. Girl's boyfriend's parents (not second cousin twice removed, too? Jeez, that's way too long) have been cleared by Perry. Boyfriend has not. Someone beat me up. And we don't even get to go home yet. Ugh. This blows.

"We're not going with the same plan, are we?" I ask, really hoping the answer is no. We're parked outside of some shitty local bar that the tourists don't visit.

"No. You're staying in the car this time. You are a fucking danger magnet." Perry responds. Which sucks even more than being a lookout. "If I'm not back in 15, call for backup."

I nod, like always. "Yeah, I know, Per."

He's walking away when someone catches my eye. It's a guy in a Zorro costume. Granted, there's probably quite a few out tonight, but I pointed him out to Perry.

We watch the guy for a moment, before he turns around, and my suspicions are correct. "That's him." I confirm, but Perry looks… surprised.

"I know him. He's a cop in the department I use. Name's Deputy Jeff Cross."

"A cop?" Wow, that was a twist. "Why would a cop beat me up and tell me to drop a case?"

Perry startled. "Told you to do what?"

Oh, fuck. See, this is why injuries suck: You forget what you tell people. "Yeah, before he walked away, he told me to stop digging in the case."

"Didn't think to mention that before?" I shrug. He's not mad, I can tell. "Cross has a son about our missing girl's age. Maybe it's a cover up."

I motion toward the door. "Should we go in, then?" Reluctantly, Perry agrees.

The club is decked out with jack-o'-lanterns and fake spider webs and orange lights and shit, but it's still not a bad place. A group of four young kids, probably barely legal ones, are sitting around the bar. An older couple is off in a booth, and various other patrons are scattered around the pool table.

Perry hones in on the kids, though. Three boys and a girl. "Keep watch. Make sure nothing gets weird." He tells me, before he slinks up to them. I have no idea what's going on, and I'm definitely more aware of our surroundings this time than last, because I really don't wanna get beat up again right now.

Before I know it, though, another guy steps in. He's wearing the same college hoodie as one of the other guys at the bar, and he's headed that way. From the picture we have of Sara and her boyfriend, I recognize him easily enough. Eric Berry.

Perry confronts him, too, for a few minutes before he sweeps me out the door. "The cop's kid is here." He says. "And the Berry kid. They all started stonewalling once he showed up. Whatever's up here, he's the mastermind."

"What are we doing now? You find out anything?"

He nodded. "They were all hanging out at some abandoned psych hospital before Berry's party. None of them saw her after that."

"So, we're going to go to some abandoned asylum … on Halloween night?" I asked, incredulous. Doesn't he know fucking anything about teenagers? That is fucking exactly where all the cool kids will be tonight.

"Not scared, are you?"

"No. Pardon me for not wanting to deal with a bunch of sugar high, drunk, teenagers while my chest feels like it's on fire." I muttered. This was turning from a not fun night, into a terrible one. "Fine. Let's go."

The asylum was only recently abandoned. It wasn't like the one in 'House On Haunted Hill' or anything. There was no huge patient riot combined with a fire. It just closed down. Less exciting, less haunted wing stories, but, unfortunately, that meant less kids were afraid to go there.

We could hear music thumping as we pulled up. See kids moving about inside. That wouldn't be conductive to our searching.

"We'll come back in the morning." Perry decided, catching sight once again of me cradling my injured chest. "I want your ribs checked out."


	2. Chapter 2

The Halloween Adventure: (Why does all of this shit happen on holidays?)

**_Okay, it only took me a year to post the end of this fic. Which is terribly pathetic. But, hey, it's here. And on an appropriate day, given the timeline of the fic itself. Although, for them it's pone day and not one year and one day. I made some changes to the first chapter, just a few little things. Plus you'll probably wanna read that again anyway, given the time… So, yeah. Original's are mine, name's you recognize are not. Enjoy!_**

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PART II:

For those of you late to the party – well, damn, you're really fucking later. Party's over. At least the Halloween one anyway...

Perry and I get back to the asylum at an unholy hour of morning. There was a trip to the ER and unfortunately not a trip back home. I've been liberally dosed with codeine and I have orders not to exert myself or my three bruised ribs that I am obviously choosing to disregard.

"This place is a mess." Perry complains, kicking aside a couple of empty orange and black Solo cups from last night's party. There are cigarette butts and beer bottles scattered about, too. The Halloween decorations are still up – nobody probably cares enough to take the cheap things down. "C'mon, there has to be something here."

"Or there could be absolutely nothing." I hopefully suggest. Nothing means I get to go back home and get out of this stupid costume and sleep. I mean, yeah, I'd told Perry I was fine to go with him on this, but damn, you ever bruised a few ribs? "I hope there's nothing."

Perry stops in his tracks, and I run square into his back, which certainly does not fucking help my ribs. "You hope that the missing girl stays missing? Nice."

"That's not what-" I start, but give up. It's a lost cause. He knows what I meant. We start toward the second level of the asylum. There's a lot of ground to cover. If I weren't injured we could split.

There's nothing there, either, and we were starting toward the third level when I heard the noise. "Did you hear that?" I ask, motioning for Perry to stop moving.

He pauses for a long moment, but the sound doesn't come again. Figures. "I hear the sound of you bat echolocation shit totally failing." He teases, and moves on.

But then I hear it again. Sounds almost like someone crying.

I go off on my own this time, leaving Perry to follow me. It ends up being on the complete opposite side of the third floor, carrying through air-vents or some other crazy shit. There's a padlocked door – the first one we'd seen in our search. Looks like something, that's for sure. "In here." I prompt, deciding that Perry can do the work of getting us in.

"Don't have any bolt cutters in your utility belt?"

"Nope. Just painkillers and discharge instructions. Sorry." I glare, getting quite tired of the Batman jokes. "I guess I left my lock-picks in my other cape."

"How unfortunate." Perry answers in mock sadness. "Alright. You stay here. My picks are in the car. Try not to get yourself killed." He warns, and then he's gone.

Okay. That's easy enough. The place is empty – aside from whoever's on the other side of a padlocked door. I don't even have to move. Awesome. I am not injuring myself. Perry should be proud.

Of course, dear readers, you know better than this, right? Not two minutes after Perry leaves, another set of footsteps approaches. Perry's pretty fast, yeah. But not that fast. And then there's a second set of footsteps, and oh, crap. Why the fucking heel does this always happen to me? There's a witch's broom on the ground a few feet away, and it fucking hurts, but I manage to get it.

It's a couple of teenagers who round the corner. I recognize them both from the bar last night. The cop who beat me up, his kid, Devon Cross, is one. The other is Eric Berry, our prime suspect in the original disappearance and the apparent mastermind. On the plus side, they look just as surprised to see me as I am to see them

"Fuck, what are you doing here?" Cross asks, sounding desperate and very much not calm. "Man, Eric, you said no one was supposed to be here!" The kid drags a hand through spiky hair and paces in nervousness.

"Shut up, man." Berry demands, reaching into his back pocket. Weapon, I realize. He's going to pull a knife or a gun or something.

The other one seems unarmed, but it's not like it would take much to take me down on a good day, let alone one where my ribs are royally fucked up. "No, no. Just relax, okay? I, I'm here to help with the clean-up from the party last night. Community service." I lie. Lying sounds good. Lying means more time for Perry to get back. Hopefully with a gun. And maybe a phone. Jesus, where the fuck is a bat signal when you need one?

The duo doesn't seem to believe me – shocking, I know, right? It would probably seem more convincing if I weren't still dressed as Batman, though.

"What are we supposed to do now?" Cross demands of his partner in crime. "This is all your fault, if you hadn't-"

Berry grabs him by the collar and shoves him back. "Dude, shut the fuck up!" He orders, pulling a knife from his back pocket. Cross is pacing frantically beside him, presumably thinking of his college years passing him by in a jail cell or something if this goes wrong. He's holding something, quite tightly, in his hand.

"Why are you here?" Berry demands again, advancing on me.

"You… you have a key." I start, looking at Cross who seems more likely to cooperate and decidedly not at the knife or the boy wielding it. "Open the door." I try, but he still doesn't move. "C- C'mon, man. There's someone fucking trapped in there."

And that is when Perry reappears. He comes out of the hallway behind the duo and freezes for a brief second before ducking back around the wall.

Cross is still just standing there, doing nothing. But Berry is moving closer with the knife. I raise my broomstick in defense and back up as much as I can – not much, but still.

"Who, whoever's in there is crying. They might need a hospital. Just open the damn door." I try again, carefully looking past both of them to where I know Perry is. He pokes his head out from behind the corner.

'Armed?' I see him mouth, and I kind of nod in Berry's direction, managing to make it look more like a sigh so they don't catch on. Perry nods back and I see him typing on his phone, his gun still holstered.

Berry snorts. "Go ahead, Dev, open it. There's no one in there. Just an iPod with creepy Halloween tracks – maniacal laughter, screaming. You know. Isn't that right?"

"Uh, yeah." Cross says, moving forward to undo the padlock. Berry knocks the broom from my hands, close enough to stab me now.

Suddenly there's a rush of action, Perry moves out from his hiding spot and into view, shoving Berry aside as much as he can and standing between the two of us, gun leveled at the teen's head. "Back the fuck away." He growls out.

Berry takes maybe two steps backwards. By then, Cross has the door open.

"It's nothing. Right, Dev?" Berry asks, and obviously they're talking about more than just Halloween tapes.

The response is not what Berry expects, clearly. Chances are, it's not what Cross expects, either, given the 'Holy fucking shit!' answer.

Berry backs up another step, trying to look inside, but having to concentrate on Perry and the gun. Suddenly, Cross appears with their missing girl in his arms. She looks sick, and she has blood congealed on her head.

Perry and I exchange concerned looks. We found the girl, but the bad guys have here. Not good.

Cross steps out of the now unlocked patient room and Berry moves, grabbing the girl from his arms. Sara falls, groaning in pain, as her ankle hits the ground at a weird angle. The audible crack is stomach-turning. "Fuck. Fucking fuck fuck fuck." He chants, and he presses the knife against her throat.

"Eric, what the hell are you doing!?" Cross demands, and obviously this was not part of whatever their original plan was. "Let her go! She's alive! Let her go!"

"No way." He answers, looking back at Perry. "She's my only way out of here. This has all gotten so totally FUCKED!" He practically screams. "Damn it." Now he turns his attention to Perry. "I… I'm leaving. You try to follow and I'll kill her." He warns. "So put the goddamn gun down!"

Perry lowers it a little, but doesn't back down further.

"I said, put the fuc-" He's cut off when Cross drives forward, pulling Sara away from her (now presumably ex-) boyfriend and shoving Eric to the floor. It's all the time Perry needs.

But, it's not like there's anything for him to do in the way of detaining the kid. When Cross pushed him, he landed on his knife. Perry rolls him over to reveal the handle of the knife sticking out of Berry's stomach, blood leaking out.

Sara, barely conscious and sobbing in Cross' arms, manages a pretty strong scream and I feel my own stomach roll.

"Harry!" Perry shouts at me, tossing me his cell phone. "Call for an ambulance. The cops should be here soon. Tell them it's clear."

There are already sirens outside.

Okay. So. That was some pretty crazy stuff, yeah? Oh, Berry? Yeah, he's fine. They got the bleeding stopped and he'll be perfect for court. Fucking thank God, I am out of the stupid Batman costume now. We're done now, right? Are we done?

Oh. What happened, you want to know? Well, aren't you the needy audience. Fine, fine.

So. The three of them - Sara, Cross, and Berry - were checking out the asylum on a dare. Kind of a lead-up to the party on Halloween. And… apparently, from what Cross told us in the statement he gave that spilled absolutely everything, it was just a prank gone horribly wrong. Sara had gotten clubbed in the head by something. She wasn't moving, they didn't think she was breathing. They weren't supposed to be there and they didn't want to get in trouble, so they bailed. Eric said nothing to his folks, but Cross hadn't wanted to leave.

You see, he was kind of sort of majorly in love with Sara the whole time and he just wanted to get her to the hospital, but Eric threatened him. He told his Dad about it all. Including the not quite accurate piece of information about Sara being dead. With a scholarship to CalTech on the line, his Dad started the cover-up. And the beating me up thing. Stupid move, really.

Continuing on, they'd left her there in the locked room, thinking she was dead, when she wasn't. They'd come back to dispose of the 'body' when they ran into us. And, well, you know that part.

She came out of it okay, all things considered. Dehydrated and malnourished and with a concussion and a broken ankle, but… alive.

And, damn it. Perry's back. I'm still recovering, so I'm not supposed to be up and about like this, telling you all this confidential client information stuff. Shit.

Gotta go. Let's hope the next holiday isn't so fucking painful or exciting. You know what? Since this is me and Perry we're talking about here, that goes for all holidays and any other day of the year.


End file.
